People are always looking for couples for sex ed vids, us included. We recieved a request from the respected Sinclair Institute, looking for baby boomers aged 35 - 55. They are looking for a female host, and couples for non-explicit segements willing to talk about sex, and couples for explicit segements. They are also looking for a male and female single reentering the dating scene. To find out more, contact This is a paid opportunity, it is in the L.A. area, and is very respectable. To find out more, comntact Wendy Mathews at castingbb@yahoo.com.  Do it soon, as they want to shoot starting Ocotber 8th.

-Jeff Booth
 

Bull Shirt

You can’t do politicking within 100 feet of a polling place, but how about inside, by the poll workers. That is the thorny problem Ohio faces, since it allowed poll workers to wear logo imprinted clothing. The Dayton Right to Life organization plans to stock Ohio polling places with their members acting as volunteers, wearing Ohio Right to Life Logo shirts. The rule change was enacted because there is a shortage of poll workers.

Hush Money Rejection

Would you accept a piece of a billion dollar pie to keep your mouth shut. Many states have, which is why California representative Barbara Lee and New Jersey Representative Frank Lautenberg introduced the Responsible Education About Life Act in Congress, which would no longer tie federal sex education funding to a promise to exclude information about the health benefits of contraception to prevent pregnancy and sexually transmitted diseases from their educational programs. Essentially, it brings back the concept of comprehensive sex education. So, who on the campaign trail supports comprehensive sex education which teaches both abstinence and birth control?  In the abstinence only crowd are virtually all of the Republican candidates, with the sole exception of Rudy Guilliani, who has been completely silent on the subject. All of the Democratic candidates have supported the REAL Act. Hillary Clinton even said she would "devote [her] very first days in office to reversing these ideological, anti-science, anti-prevention policies."

State Mandated Lying

Louisianna Governor Blanco signed HB 25, requiring that abortion providers tell patients that fetal anesthesia is available to "eliminate or alleviate organic pain to the unborn child" and that abortion providers give patients a brochure stating that an "unborn child has the physical structures necessary to experience pain" at 20 weeks' gestation. The only problem is that there is no scientific consensus on when fetuses can actually feel pain, but studies show that they probably do not feel pain before 28 weeks or 7 months, long after most abortions are performed. And they don't tell them that fetal anesthesia increases the mother's risks for breathing problems and bleeding from a relaxed uterus.

Higher Education Sex Costs

Thanks to the Deficit Reduction Act signed by President Bush last year, college students will see a steep increase in the cost of birth control that they used to be able to purchase through their campus health centers. The bill actually provides a financial disincentive to drug companies that want to offer discounts to college students.

Romney Gets Tubed

The internet is complicated. With sites such as YouTube.com, no wonder Senator Ted Stevens described the Internet as a series of tubes. Apparently, everyone has their own tube, and many of those tubes are filled with child predators. At least according to Presidential Candidate Mitt Romney. He decided not to do a YouTube debate like the Democratic presidential candidates did on CNN for that reason. He said, "YouTube looked to see if they had any convicted sex offenders on their web site. They had 29,000." He sure did not want to get sucked into any of those tubes. Except that he was confusing YouTube with Myspace, which is owned by Rupert Murdock, the Republican Mastermind behind the fake news Fox New Channel. And if elected, Romney plans to take his depth of knowledge about the Internet and use it to enforce our obscenity laws. Of course, what’s to keep him from confusing free speech with obscenity?

The U.N. Gets Screwed

Every year, Congress allocates a U.S. contribution to UNFPA, which is essentially the United Nations women's health agency. They promote wide spread access to contraception, work to reduce deaths of women from preventable complications of pregnancy, and reduce the spread of AIDS.  This year, like every year, President Bush continues to withhold the money.

Stem Cell Stymie

Bush made a big deal about alternatives to making stem cells without having to destroy human embryos. It was roundly cited in Bush’s veto of new stem cell legislation that would have removed some of his restrictions. Now scientists actually have come up with some technologies they would like to try that don’t require embryo destruction, but they can’t get funding. Why? Because the way Bush’s ban was written assumes that the only way to get stem cells is by destroying embryos, and makes no concession for alternative methods. So essentially, it is a ban on federally funded stem cell research period. The National Institute for Health has sidelined procedures that essentially remove a single cell from an embryo, because of concerns that cell removal might harm the embryo somehow, something for which there is no scientific support. And don’t forget that all of this is about harvesting cells from embryos where most of them are still going to be destroyed anyway.

Misinformation.gov

Its back! The 4Parents.gov website was changed after criticisms that it contained scientifically inaccurate information. The American Psychological Association reports that while most women feel a great deal of stress before an abortion, after an abortion, most women report feeling relief and happiness. No mention of that on the just updated 4Parents site, which now claims that women can feel sad and go on to abuse drugs and alcohol after an abortion. Gee, so can women after having a child they did not want. Contrary to claims that the site was designed by scientists, it turns out it was actually designed by a conservative organization. 

The big news is that we have launched a new Erotic University sponsored Web site that has been something we have wanted to get going for a long while.

It is called Sex Science Skeptic, and it is a discussion site for scientists, researchers and other experts to examine potentially dubious scientific claims regarding sexuality. As we have seen over the years, one of the main areas for bad and biased science has been in the sexual arena. It reflects our own culture's conflicted attitudes about sex, and the mythology that surrounds so much of what we think we know about sex.

We hope that it will become a source for writers, interested laymen, and others to check out published accounts of sex research to see if they really hold up to criticism from other experts.

You'll also want to check out the new special Halloween section of the Erotic University virtual campus. Go to the Student Union and look on the events board for the Halloween party. It goes live October 1st.

An interesting article in the San Francisco Chronicle quotes the author of “Sex as Nature Intended It,” Kristen O'Hara, who claims that she had pain from sex and resultant frigidity due to having abnormal sex. And what caused the abnormal sex?

According to her, it was the unnatural shape of her husband’s penis because he had been circumcised. She also claims that circumcision reduces pleasure for the woman, which is why so many have to fake orgasm.

I am assuming she is unfamiliar with a little thing called a clitoris, which has a lot to say about orgasms but is quite silent on the topic of extra pockets of skin on the tip of the penis.

O’Hara has her theories about foreskin cushioning and its ability to help the vagina retain lubrication, but of course, she never consulted any physicians or sex therapists or in fact any other experts. She just did a survey, which is only as good as the protocols used.

Experts such as Susie Brite have never heard of this pain from uncircumcised penises theory, and neither have I, but it is certainly a useful argument for those who want to see a ban on circumcision. And yes, there is a very adamant politicized anti-circumcision crowd that is obsessed with the topic. 

There are some advantages to circumcision that I find rather compelling. Based on my own discussions with women and from anecdotal evidence from books like Maggie Paley’s “The Book of the Penis”, it seems that quite a few women find it more pleasant to give head to a circumcised penis. It has long been claimed that circumcision is just more sanitary, but research shows it goes beyond that. According to research by French AIDS researcher Bertran Auvert, circumcised men were 63 percent less likely to contract AIDS through vaginal sex than uncircumcised men. Of course, that's actual research, not the casual asking of friends scientific technique used by author O'Hara.

Journalism Gone Lazy

Dear Washington Post writer Rob Stein;

I don’t know if you are old enough to remember when journalists actually did fact checking. You probably don’t even remember when they had journalists trained in science. You may not even realize that in your error riddled recent Washington Post story called "Plan B Use Surges, And So Does Controversy",  your first mistake began with the very first line.

Your lead was-  “The popularity of the morning after pill Plan B has surged. “ Actually, Plan B is a form of emergency contraceptive, not a morning after pill. They are different. The sooner you take emergency contraceptives, the better, so your opening line actually could confuse people into taking the drug later than they should. Or worse, if they don’t take it by the morning after, they may assume that it is too late, even though it will reduce the risk of pregnancy if you take it within the first 72 hours.

You say that Plan B consists of higher doses of the hormones found in standard birth control pills. Except that it has progestin, a single hormone found only in progestin based pills.

You write that the FDA said there was too little safety data to approve the drug for teenagers younger than 18.  What you did not report and probably don't know is that the FDA does not do research on birth control pills for women under the age of 18- they assume, based on reasonable science, that the drugs will work the same on all women capable of conceiving regardless of age, and they did not identify any issues that would have required age-related restrictions. The addition of age restrictios was strictly political.

You state that Conservative members of Congress and advocacy groups questioned the drug's safety. Nowhere do you make clear its long history of testing and the concurrence of FDA scientists that it is one of the safest drugs ever put on the market.

You say that opponents claim availability could make it easier for men to have sex with underage girls. That same ludicrous claim has been made for every form of birth control, and is almost too stupid to have repeated.

You say opponents of Plan B claim that it can cause the equivalent of an abortion. They could also claim that it can cause bluebirds to fly out of your butt, but neither claim is scientifically true. Sure, you adhere to the he said she said version of modern journalism that involves interviewing skills over research and fact checking skills, where you just quote both sides of an issue,  but why does the opposing side of an issue get to be completely ignorant of any facts whatsoever yet still given the same level of credibility? They aren’t the other side of a controversy, they are the other side of  common sense, facts and rationality.

Remind me again why the stupid ignorant people need to be represented as the other side just so you can report on a controversy? I guess it sells newspapers but it also sells out your readers. You want to write about controversy? How about a story about how mindnumbingly stupid anti-abortion advocates have to be to get worked up about a pill that would ultimately prevent abortions?  That’s almost as good as the real story here- Plan B is safely helping women find an easier way to avoid unwanted pregnancy and abortions and should have been made available over the counter years ago.